A Strange Act of Salvation

“I swore that I will never kill again.”

The clash of swords was inevitable.

“No…. no… no… Don’t do it…Please…”

The enemy was less than a feet away. And yet Denis had not raised his sword in front of him. He was deluded, sick, and unwilling to fight.

The Roseman pivoted before crouching to hit his target on the legs; but then suddenly he hesitated and thrust his sword onto Denis’s face.

“No!!!”

Within a split-second the sick lad swung his blade to block the thrust. The Roseman’s sword wavered, giving enough room for Denis to take a step backward and recover his personal space.

The Roseman himself leaped backwards, and then lunged again.”

“I can’t fight you…”

“No one told you to fight,” came a reply, seemingly from the assassin.

He brushed his blade against the already raised sword of Denis, retreating again, and then lunging again.

“They expected you to die, that’s why they sent you here. To be the hero they could worship. Don’t you get it?” The enemy was tormenting him with his words more than his blows.

Denis cried out.

And then suddenly he came lashing out at the Roseman, a strange sight, because the Roseman was slowly taking steps back.

But it was all a play. With one strafing move, the Roseman dealt a blow under Denis’s left arm, and the soldier wailed in agony as he fell. Remarkably the Roseman did not follow up on his blow. He lowered his sword, and watched the all-too-familiar sight of a slow death.

The flesh under Denis’s arm breathed, squirting blood in the process, and also revealing the young man’s diseased skin. The maggots were gushing out more slowly than the blood.

Denis remembered his friends again. Ned died on the same side as he now dies; Clem and Sandy had fought for this guy and died nevertheless. Are they, like so many thousand others, going to be remembered as just the victims of this devil incarnate?

He remembered the soft but morose face of Cham, how she wept at the news of her brother’s fall, Ned’s final duel with the Roseman, Clem’s insanity as he charged to defend the Roseman’s gang despite the lack of a Compass or Astrolabe or even a shield. Now, he, diseased that he was, was about to join his friends. Will Cham cry for him too?

He knew otherwise. I must defeat this bastard.

Blood and worms gushing from his side, he stood up, resolved, planting the sharp end of his sword into the sand to support him, and then swung the same blade in preparation for his strike.

“Long live the Republic! I love you, Cham! Aaaahhh!!!”

He charged like never before.

Strange thing was, the Roseman lost all sense of the drama and raised his hands before him as if to defend himself mockingly with only his arms.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Man, you don’t have to do that.” He was near chuckles.

Denis was stupefied. Keeping his sword raised above his head, he wondered, what the fuck? Here I charge and you defend yourself like some helpless jerk.

The Roseman was smiling, but not the terrifying smile he and his friends saw during their first encounter with him. He had begun laughing, and lowered his defenses by laughing so hard that he held his right torso as if to control the stitches that were paining him.

Oh God, oh God…. The assassin continued to laugh, and Denis began to feel insulted by the Roseman’s reaction to his charge.

Shit… He was about to strike this most fearsome enemy, but the guy was laughing so hard and gasping for breath because of the stitches that he had to stop. Roseman or not, I’m not going to kill him unarmed… as the Roseman had already dropped his weapon.

Maybe, this is my way out… to Cham, and to avoiding the fate of my friends… Denis thought. For some unknown reason the man was still rolling on the ground with his laughter that Denis had already decided to leave the place. He ran, trying to look back but hoping that the man will get killed by his stitches… an impossible thing, you idiot! Just get the fuck out of here!